


Destiny vs. the Chosen Path

by fannishliss



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Geraskier Week, M/M, Origin Story, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22737067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: Geralt ponders the Path that led him to his soulmate.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 133





	Destiny vs. the Chosen Path

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet is my small contribution to Geraskier Week: soulmates!

Geralt of Rivia had no use for soulmates. His teachers at the School of the Wolf had drilled even the youngest boys (and Geralt was amongst the youngest) who came to them, either by the Law of Surprise (as was often the case, for who would willingly sacrifice their child to an inhuman band of monster killers?) or by orphaning, destitution, or some other cursed twist of fate.

“Destiny dropped you onto the Path,” Geralt remembered the Old Headmaster saying, readily and often, till it became a refrain in the minds of young Witcher learners. “For a Witcher, there is only the Path, and the tools one carries to survive the Path. There can be nothing else.”

Geralt still remembered the Old Headmaster’s voice. That was before Destiny dropped a wildcard pair of twins, powerful and chaotic untrained mages, into the nearby village, whose firestorm of destruction had laid the Wolf School low, bringing to an abrupt halt the way of life that had prevailed there for over a thousand years. 

He remembered the scorn, disbelief, and disdain he felt upon first hearing rumors of the sacking of Kaer Morhen.

He remembered thinking to himself, “This is how low humans creep. They hate us so much they gleefully tell stories of our undoing, bloodthirsty for the very foundlings they abandon to us to be murdered in their beds. Humans sacking Kaer Morhen? Bah!”

As the rumors mounted and solidified, Geralt’s Path bore him northward. He remembered his unease at the frowns and lowered gazes of the humans he passed, how the closer he came to the place every Wolf called home, the fewer would look him in the eye. Till at last he stood at the open gates of the ancient keep, out of season…. while the peasants of nearby villages were still bringing in their harvests…. while the cycle of the sun rolled on, uncaring…. Geralt stood gazing in horror at the green grass growing in unkempt bunches before the open gates… birds peacefully singing. No clash of sword against sword. No scurrying feet running errands. Silence, birdsong, and an unkempt, empty courtyard, unmarred by the pounding of feet trained hard by hours of daily practice. Grasses growing in the courtyard of the Wolf School, the final trials unpassed at last.

Geralt tried to forget, but he never could. How young he had been in those days. How that final heartbreak had truly broken him to the Path the way nothing else had. How his strangely happy heart had finally fallen, when he realized there would never be any more Witchers. In his horror he remembered his bitter rejoicing, the tears he had wiped from his eyes at the thought that never again would a young boy be given, willing or unwilling, to the School, to be beaten, broken, and unmade, forged into a weapon against the unending scourge of monsters. 

He and his brother Witchers did not speak of the Old days. They never spoke of the children Vesemir had saved – human children, bodies too young and soft still to undergo the mutations, who had been away from the keep that day, off in the woods with the fencing master learning to forage in winter, because the fencing master had lost a bet with the wildcraft master over a game of Gwent. 

Those children had flitted like shadows away from the School of the Wolf. None were willing, least of all Vesemir himself, to administer the mutagens to younglings, without full mastery of the cantrips that converted handfuls of herbs and grasses, plus a few more rarified ingredients torn from the bodies of monsters, into a potion that would rip away humanity and convert the human child into a Witcher. 

Geralt did remember. He remembered learning his cantrips, learning his potions, learning his swordplay. The youth of a Witcher to be is spent in hard learning, He had taken to it readily enough. The cantrips came easily to him, the potions even more so. 

“My ma was a healer,” he had whispered, proudly to the Old master alchemist. He couldn’t remember her clearly, only the color of her cloak, the snatches of tune she sometimes sang, the softness of her hands, the warm smell of her hair. Often crushing herbs he could almost remember. 

“We do not speak of whence we came,” the alchemist had responded, as they all did. 

But Geralt was acknowledged, in the dry nods and increasing challenges they handed him, to have a gift for the small magic of Witchers. Even before the mutations, his cantrips had glowed. 

No one said, “this might mean you survive.” No one encouraged such thoughts. Some of his classmates would not pass their trials, and as it came pass, some did. 

Geralt walked the Path, a Path that fewer and fewer Witchers walked with every passing decade.

Monsters became more numerous, in the way of things, and Geralt, heart heavy, began to despair.

Then, one night, in his cups, in a darkened corner, he locked eyes with his soulmate. A boy, a mere human boy with bright blue eyes and floppy brown hair, a smile like the sun, fashionable clothes, bad shoes, strong hands, and an irrepressible spirit.

Geralt’s heart leaped up and sank again within him. Every breath in, he felt his soul yearn toward him – a bard, a melodious, joyful, talented bard, shoving stale bread into his pants when the rude peasants lobbed it at him. Every breath out, his instincts screamed at him to run, to tear it down, this cobweb of hope. A boy such as this would not last a day on the Path. And Geralt, already walking it for scores of years, could not turn.

Then the boy was before him, was speaking, was smiling at the Witcher. The bard was flirting with Geralt!

“Three words,” he said, practically dancing from foot to foot. 

I want you, the Witcher thought, his heart burning in his eyes. He grunted merely, hoping the boy would let the butterfly of his interest light upon some other victim.

“Three words! A bard needs feedback. What do you say? How was my song?” 

“Lies,” Geralt said, feeling the smile crack the corners of his lips, the smile that had not touched his face for many a lonely mile. 

The young man sat down with him, bought him a drink, shared his meal, walked with him, reversed his fortunes, saved his reputation, resolved to return to him time after time. The young man grew older, grew famous, grew wealthy, grew into his talent, prodigious, and never left Geralt alone, even when Geralt lashed out, betrayed, abandoned, fell into his most Witcher ways.

“I knew from the moment our eyes met,” he told Ciri one evening, at the long table in Kaer Morhen. Wintering over, with Vesemir and Lambert and Eskel and some of the others who had come to join the Path along with Ciri.

Geralt grunted as his lover picked up his hand, from where he was holding it on his thigh, under the table.

“This one, gods, you should have seen him. Dusty as a graveyard! Hair in tangled mats! And the state of his nails!”

Geralt had to laugh, a low grunt that fooled no one at that table.

The bard’s own nails were perfect, of course, as was right and proper for a professional lutanist. 

“I knew the moment he looked up and saw me, the moment our eyes met. That’s when I chose the Path. I couldn’t let him walk alone, not ever again. And I knew, of course, that it would be hard. And that sometimes our Paths would stray apart. But I just knew. Call me a Romantic.”

“Romantic!” Ciri crowed. 

“Guilty, as charged,” the bard allowed, with a graceful bow to his daughter.

Geralt would always regret the pain he gave, the wounds he inflicted, but he would never, ever regret the day they met, the way their lives had seamlessly joined over the years to become one. 

Geralt of Rivia, not his real name, but maybe slightly better than Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde—the White Wolf.

Julian Alfred Pancratz, Viscount de Lettenhove --not his real name, even though he was born with it, bore it and ran away from it. He was Jaskier, a flower made of sunlight, soulmate of a Witcher, bard to the White Wolf.

Geralt leaned in, kissed his true love on the temple. His crow's feet were beautiful, just marking the corners of his eyes with laughter, his hair was untinged by silver. He was perfect. And Geralt would love him with every breath, for as long as he breathed, on and off their chosen Path -- together. 

**Author's Note:**

> I made up the details about the sacking. To me it's highly unlikely that a mob of peasants could sack a school full of Witchers unless some of them were powerful untrained chaos wielders. Eclipse Princesses maybe? 
> 
> As for Vesemir, this idea that he was subbing for the botany professor is the best I could come up with. We actually know that Geralt forages for herbs, so he must have had a botany professor. Fencing master Vesemir, out in the middle of the woods, on a snowy camping trip, showing little kids how to chew birch bark and mash acorns for flour. it's my best guess.
> 
> PPS, Ciri is spending the winter with her two dads and several uncles in this story. Yennifer is probably Up To No Good with Tissaia and Triss right now, but she and Ciri do have their proper mom/daughter relationship.


End file.
